


Some Lamb

by HarkerX



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst and Porn, Bath Sex, Canon Compliant, Comfort/Angst, Discussion Of Murder, Dom/sub Undertones, Feet kissing, London, M/M, Masturbation, Rain, Top Ethan Chandler, nefarious plans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-07-13 13:24:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16018817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarkerX/pseuds/HarkerX
Summary: Ethan's come to London to devour his ghosts.What he finds instead might be his future.





	1. A Roomful of Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> Ah! Depressing Ethan is depressed. This was written after a discussion with a friend as I had no intention of writing Penny Dreadful fanfic?
> 
> But oh, do I love Ethan Chandler so, so much. 
> 
> I'd say this has a happy ending, but I would not say it's sunshine and rainbows*. It's raining in London, after all.
> 
> This fic assumes you have seen through season 3.
> 
> (thank you so much for reading!)
> 
> (*I may have lied about the happy ending. Depends on one's perspective, I suppose?)
> 
> (note: this is slightly edited as the pacing was driving me bananas)

London is made up of ghosts. The sort that cling to coattails, to smiles, to wistful glances. To the bottom of bottles, to the tip of a needle, to the foot of a bed.

This is a thing Ethan knows because he has felt haunted in each of those places. A cold upon his skin that the weather, even though London is damp and dreary, can’t explain away.

Which is why, as he laces his worn, leather boots, he doesn’t look to the cross, hammered tin hung on a short iron nail.

He doesn’t look, but when he stands, when shadows creep along the corners, when they fill the cracks in the plaster, he grips the cross in one hand and slides the nail from the wall.

The tin he drops.

The iron he keeps.

The man, whose name he does not know, he leaves to sleep under dirty linen, on a bed of wool and horsehair.

#

The rain smells of oil, of dirt. Is the colour of coal, the colour of blood in moonlight. Ethan opens his palm, rain sluices over iron, shines bright, a black, black star.

Sliding the nail back into his pocket, he pulls up his collar and steps into the alley.This part of London is miles from the room he rents down by the water, a tiny room with narrow walls. Paper thin, he hears others secrets as sure as they hear his. He tucks them away in his dirty coat. They might be useful later.

When it is dark, he walks. Walks the city, and when a stranger smiles at him, he smiles back. Last night the smile was crooked teeth and wet -blue eyes, a simple way to wait out the rain but the rain does not stop.

There is an ache where the stranger touched him. A widening, an emptiness. Ethan scratches at his neck, tests his tongue against his too-sharp teeth. Gaslamp flickers, casts a wavering, golden light along the sides of stone buildings, their gargoyles dripping water. Every step is uneven, cracked and crumbling.A wooden door hangs crooked on rusted hinges.

Opening it seems like a terrible idea.

Ethan is made of nothing else.

#

The room is fall-leaf red. Lit red either by fire or spark. It is a campfire, burning over grass. Ethan breathes in smoke. Recognizes the neighing of horses, the swatting of flies, the stomping of hooves on hard-packed mud.

There is pressure. The lightest of touches. Fingers on skin.

“Welcome to Limehouse.”

Ethan turns. He was just somewhere else.

Now he is here.

A dark haired woman, her mouth painted crimson, viciously so, stands in front of him, her hand to his arm. Small and thin and pointed, she wrinkles her nose as if he smells bad, and chances are he does.

“You did not bring your lover.”

“I don’t have—” he starts and then lightly touches the brim of his hat. “Who are you?”

“Lillian Grey, Mister?”

Grey? A memory crawls up his spine and he shakes it away. “Chandler,” Ethan replies, planting a kiss to her offered hand, the lace rough, cinnamon-scented.

Lillian entwines their fingers, leading Ethan through a dark, narrow hallway. “Well, Mr. Chandler, what brings you to our doorway?”

What? “The rain.”

“As good a reason as any. Most men come to Limehouse out of loneliness.”

Loneliness. Absence. Longing. “Do I seem lonely to you?”

“No, you seem like a man who knows you can’t outrun a ghost.”

Ethan removes his hat, tucks it under his arm. Rain drips to the floor from the hem of is coat. “I imagine you do a fine job of keeping them at bay.”

“Ah, Mr. Chandler, for days at at time if that’s your wish.”

Was it? “Is it forgetting you offer?”

“Not forgetting.” Lillian shakes her head. “Transforming.”

The air is smoke, but not opium. He knows opium, the dens of New York and San Francisco. There are fewer dens in London, he’s learned. Other sins, other delights. A wicked, seeping darkness. 

Now, there is the closing of a door, a low, masculine laugh. The unmistakable snap of a whip. A woman, weeping.

“So you make monsters out of men?”

“No,” Lillian says. “We forgive the men who already monsters.”

There is blood. Tissue in his teeth. There is a newspaper headline in which his name is never mentioned but the words call to him, whisper to him in the lonely dark, and so he tries not to be alone and strangers are good for that, for the distraction, the interruption.

Here is Lillian. Miss Grey.

But she is not the mood he is in, even as she slips her hand in the crook of his elbow and leads him through an arched doorway and into a much larger room.

#

The room is a room he has never seen before and yet it is familiar. Dark wood and crimson velvet, the floor inlaid with stars. Devil stars, the points of Vanessa’s library, the floor beneath her table, beneath her devil tarot.

The Lovers.

They have been and won’t be again. He misses Brona’s laugh, the fatherly glances of Malcom. Vanessa, gone to flowers.

Nothing in this city is pure.

He has been gone for too long. Back to America. To his father. To the place of punishments, where he paid for his sins, but still they linger. 

You can’t outrun a ghost.

Perhaps, now that he’s returned, London will learn it can’t outrun him either. There are nine days before the full moon. He will decide on day eight just what he's doing here. A second door opens across from where they stand. A sandy haired child runs through, arms open. Ethan stiffens. Steps back. The boy tugs at Lillian’s skirt and she bends down.

They share a secret.

The boy runs off.

“Come,” Lillian says, urging Ethan to walk. “May I offer you a bath?”

A bath. He wants to ask about the boy but it’s none of his business. “Is it that bad?”

She laughs. “It is bad enough, Mr. Chandler.”

With that he tilts his head, sniffs. Sweat. The lingering scent of sex on his skin. Dirt and oil and the rain. “My pockets are only half full,” he admits, but she waves her hand, dismissing him.

“We are a place of favours. Coin has no currency here.”

“Then I’m not sure I can afford you at all.”

The woman taps Ethan’s arm, she leads him through the room to a narrow hallway. “That is my decision to make, not yours.”

Ethan clears his throat and the woman stops, places her hand upon a door, its wood deeply scarred, the handle iron. Wrought. Twisted. “And who shall attend your bath? Shall they be as your lover?”

He understands what she is asking.

What an hourglass it would be if this place could truly turn back time. If only there was a choice but the choice is a corpse, is a ghost, is a memory. Is a moment. Is Wagner on the wings of a green fairy. Is a woman with wild hair, and such sharp claws. “Send who you like.”

“Do you wish to remember the past or see the future?”

A brutally unforgiving question. “I know my future.”

Lillian nods and gestures him inside. “Then I believe this will please you.”

Steam fills the room, the bath is inset. Marble. Deep enough and wide enough. A small shadow appears behind Lillian. A boy no more than ten or twelve.

Why are there so many children here?

“May I take your wardrobe, Sir?” The boy holds out his arms.

Ethan twirls his fingers. The boy turns around. Lillian slips out of the room in a flourish of silk, closing the door behind her. Ethan ties a towel about his waist. The pistol he keeps. The clothing he hands to the boy. He considers the nail, once safe in his pocket. He does not know why he kept it, maybe for luck. A blessing, the material that holds up the light of God.

He is not sure of God.

“Shall we wash them, Sir?”

“Yes,” the shadows answer.

Ethan turns slowly, but there is only the dark, corners the candles can’t brighten.

Ethan glances at the boy and raises a finger to his lips. The boy nods and bends, tightening his hold on the laundry. Ethan slips the gun from its holster, so comfortable in his hand.

“I’ve no doubt you’d only need one bullet, but I’d rather drown, Mr. Chandler, if you’re in the mood for murder.”

It’s impossible.

Ethan nods at the door, shoos the boy. He offers Ethan a bow and is gone in a scurry.

The gun is barrel down, but his finger doesn’t leave the trigger. Shadows twist. A candle is lit, flickering gold.

“Mr. Gray.” His pistol hand starts to shake. 

“Mr. Chandler.”

Dorian has the grace not to stare. Ethan doesn’t. Six years in prison have made Ethan lean and twitchy.

“Why are you here?” But of course Dorian is here. The Dorian Ethan knew was wild and bored and exhausted by life and worn down by time, by the perpetual clicking of a clock, the ephemerality of his own mortality.A bullet could stop his heart. It would only beat again. “Do you still listen to Wagner?”

It’s a stupid, useless question. A beacon. A light in the dark. A string tied to yet another memory.

Dorian's laugh changes the light. “Not as often as I’d like.”

Ethan puts the gun on the floor. The towel slips, he grabs it, holding it close. He doesn’t go to Dorian, but to the bath, the warm, gentle water. Suddenly so aware of the dirt under his nails, the salt of the man whose bed he shared on through morning.

“Do you see Malcolm?” As if they are old friends.

Dorian lifts the candle and shakes his head. “Not in some months. But I have heard how he is, and I understand he is truly leaving for Africa this time. You were his son for a spell, perhaps it would serve you to go with him.”

His son. Another way to disappoint yet another man. “I don’t want to talk about Africa.” Or Malcolm. 

“Then what shall we talk about, Mr. Chandler? Shall we give names to the ghosts? Shall we mourn together, shall we forget together? Shall we speak of mistakes made and moments lost?” 

Water sloshes over the side of the bath. Ethan touches his toe to the warmth. Ethan does is best not to speak. Uses his mouth for other things. “I should bathe.” He almost adds: _and you should go_.

But he doesn’t.

“I don’t mind the way you smell,” Dorian smiles.

Ethan grunts away his approval. Has Dorian ever taken no for an answer? Would Ethan ever want him to? “Perhaps that’s in my favour, then, for blood and regret are not so easily washed away.”

“I can make you clean again,” Dorian says.

Ethan gives him some semblance of a smile and holds out his hand. Dorian takes a step forward, the lavish robe he wears falls from his shoulders to the floor. He is as Ethan remembers.

Beautiful.

“Do you still wish to be someone else?”

“That a trick question?”

Dorian laughs. “Not at all. There are pieces of our past worth repeating, if you’re so inclined.”

Ethan nods, unsurprised to find a wetness at the corner of his eyes. He breathes in, wipes away water. “I’m inclined.” Inclined to remember. To forget. 

The towel falls to the floor. 

When Ethan has settled Dorian steps over the edge of the tub and walks down the carved steps. Ethan opens his arms. Dorian fits perfectly into the curve of Ethan’s body, and he buries his nose in the other man’s hair. “Tell me about your cologne.”

“Do I tell you of lightning and ozone? Or iron and blood?” Dorian finds one of Ethan’s hands and entwines their fingers. “Was it sandalwood? Vetiver? Or lavender? I thought perhaps it was the absinthe.”

“Wasn’t,” Ethan replies, dragging a ragged thumbnail along the side of Dorian’s hand. “Either you followed me here, or you work here.” Or Dorian is a ghost. A trick of this place.

“I assure you, Mr. Chandler, the ways in which I fill my days will never be construed as work.”

Of course Ethan remembers the parties, the orchestrations. Dorian, the conductor. Dorian, lounging naked in the arms of any number of beautiful creatures. Remembers his hand on Dorian’s neck and the gentle way in which Dorian peeled the clothing from his body.

“Then how are you here?”

“I saw you, someone I thought was you, but the longing mind plays tricks. We see shapes in the dark and hope the shadows of strangers are the faces of friends. I did not think you would ever return to London, for London offers infinite heartbreak for you and I.I had wondered if the pain you and I shared would make us enemies or lovers and I have yearned for both.” He pauses. “The latter, more than the former.”

That Dorian missed him, thought of him, is a surprise. For it was Dorian who brought him back to himself. It was Dorian who was not afraid to die in Ethan’s arms. “Is that what you think we are?” Lovers.

“Ah, I think we have been. We might be again.”

Ethan rests his chin on Dorian’s shoulder, the feel of bone beneath flesh is steadying, comforting. If the man is a ghost then let him be this ghost. He closes his eyes. “I went back to Colorado.”

“To see your painting?”

The cave. Its painted walls. Ethan nods into Dorian’s hair. “When I was released from prison, there was nowhere else that made sense to go.”

“You searched for honesty.”

Possibly. “You never did show me your favourite.”

“Nor will I, I do not think, for it would not improve your humour.”

Ethan stretches and tilts his head back, flattening his palm in the centre of Dorian’s chest. “My humour. Tell me a fucking joke, Dorian.”

“Why are young ladies like arrows?” Dorian asks, with a flick of his fingers.

Why indeed? Ethan clucks his tongue. “Tell me.”

“Because in the presence of a beau, they are all a quiver!” He laughs, shifting down even as he holds Ethan’s arm.

“A quiver,” Ethan repeats, dropping a chaste kiss to Dorian’s shoulder.

“You asked for a joke.”

“I should be careful what I wish for.”

“In my experience, Mr. Chandler, we should all be.”

“Call me Ethan.”

“I think you like me calling you Mr. Chandler.”

Of course he does.

_Yes, Mr. Chandler_.

Somehow the bathwater is still warm, Dorian is still warm. “I don’t know why I’m here.”

“Perhaps you came to say goodbye.”

To Vanessa. To the possibility of their life together. To this, to Dorian’s unfettered acceptance, to the night creatures. “Is this our final farewell?”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Dorian says and he shifts again, covering Ethan’s hand, urging it below the water. “You’re young, still, and I will be young forever.”

“I don’t feel young.” An understatement.He doesn’t understand how Dorian found him here. Ethan has been in London for days, weeks. Most of them spent in the beds of strangers. “But you feel as I remember.”

“All of me?” Dorian laughs.

Ethan places a gentle bite to his neck and slides his hand down, past the rough, course hair, and drags a thumb over Dorian’s length. “Yes.”

Dorian closes his eyes and leans his head back into the curve of Ethan’s neck. “Do tell.”

“You tell me,” Ethan says, and it could mean anything.

Dorian clears his throat and smiles. “Of your scars? The brutality behind your touch, even as tears course down your cheeks? Your tentative, hesitant want, a demand for freedom, liberation, forgiveness. Baptism.”

“Yes,” Ethan says, even as his hand circles Dorian’s cock, even as he buries the curve of his thumb into the base, into the soft place there. Dorian shifts his hips, rocking himself against Ethan’s knuckle.

“Touch me.” Dorian urges and Ethan squeezes and strokes, making ripples in the water, obscuring the view.

They are quiet. Breathing not quite in unison, the rise and fall of Ethan’s chest marking time as he works Dorian, slides a thumb along the vein, palms him, presses his mouth to Dorian’s neck and in the press of teeth there is a sigh and a lift of hips. Ethan’s own arousal is a hundred miles away. In a house. In a bed. In a parlour. It’s easy to touch, to run his hand over Dorian’s chest, to explore the lean of this almost-stranger’s body and close his eyes and pretend he’s alone.

“Is this how you pleasure yourself, Mr. Chandler?”

“Yes,” Ethan answers.

“Thinking of me?”

Of course Dorian. Dorian and Vanessa and Brona, and all of them, naked. Entwined. “Sometimes,” he says, tightening his grip, stroking Dorian the way he would stroke his own cock. Urgently. Brutally. Separate from his own body.

Dorian gasps, one hand goes to the side of the bath and the other into the meat of Ethan’s thigh. “Do not stop,” Dorian whispers and there is a sudden stutter, a trembling and milk flows over Ethan’s fingers, floats off in a ripple of water.

The candles make shapes. Shadows. Paintings on a cave.

Dorian lifts Ethan’s hand, kisses his fingers, laps at him, draws fingers into his mouth and suckles, softly, murmuring. Ethan tilts his head to Dorian’s. “Yes,” he says, but Dorian has asked him nothing as he draws Ethan’s wrist to his mouth, bites him softly, works his teeth into skin and bone and kisses the inside of the man’s wrist.

The scars there.

“These are new,” he says.

“Yes,” Ethan replies.

“Immortality is the worst punishment of them all,” Dorian sighs, shifting on Ethan’s lap. He touches the man’s face and draws him close in a kiss. This is what Ethan falls into; the soft of Dorian, as if kissing air, a dream.

“Let me.” Dorian says and Ethan doesn’t know what it means but he nods. Dorian pulls away and climbs from the bath. Water drips to the floor like rain.

The man goes to a small cupboard, it opens in a creak. “I think it’s been some time since someone cared for you.”

Some time. Some weeks. Some years. Prison, he supposes, depending on the light.

When Dorian returns there is soap, a sea sponge, oil. Dorian sits on the edge of the tub, his legs in the water. “Shall we talk, Ethan?”

Ethan. It’s enough to warrant the smallest of smiles. “I didn’t come here to talk.”

“Hrmm,” Dorian murmurs. “I imagine when you opened the door to escape the weather you did not expect to see me. No telegraphs, no doves, no maps, no messages at all and yet here we are.”

The air is jasmine and roses.

“Close your eyes.”

He does.

Dorian rakes gentle fingers through Ethan’s hair, fiddling with the knots. Ethan breathes down flowers. A sigh and Dorian slowly scrubs the dirt from Ethan’s hair, drags his thumbs along his jawbone, massages his temples until Ethan tilts his head to the right and drops his chin.

“More of that,” he says.

Dorian obliges. Kneads the knots from Ethan’s neck, slides his hands down over his shoulders, splaying his palms over Ethan’s chest in a sweet and slow caress. Ethan is quiet, save the murmuring, save the way he wraps a strong hand around Dorian’s shin.Save the low, rumbling growl.

“I was unaware wolves purred,” Dorian laughs as he reaches back for the sponge. “You need to rinse.”

Ethan does as he’s told. Slides under the water, washing away the grime, the soap. Prison. A memory. When he breaks the water, Dorian is there, dragging his hands again over Ethan’s hair, squeezing out water. Ethan blinks his eyes open and sighs.

“Now for the rest of you,” Dorian says, and he hands Ethan the soapy damp sponge.

“Isn’t that your job?”

Dorian swats the back of his head.“This is my job.” Dorian drops a kiss to Ethan’s shoulder and slips a hand lower, thumbing Ethan’s nipple, pinching it softly.Dorian’s breath is warm. There is no one, Ethan learned so many years ago, who feels like Dorian. There is no one else who looks at him with childish wonder and sadness, interest. Fear.

Dorian does not run away. He runs toward.

No one’s teeth are Dorian’s teeth. No one’s mouth is Dorian’s mouth. A brush of hair. Ethan lifts his chin and Dorian catches his jaw in thin, delicate hands. Kisses him, an urgent press of tongue and teeth, a hand to Ethan’s neck to hold him still.

When the sponge needs soaping, Ethan lifts his hand and Dorian obliges. When it’s time again to rinse, Dorian takes cupfuls of water and tips them over Ethan’s body. The surface of the bath becomes bubbles. Dorian scoops up a handful and blows.

“Make a wish, Mr. Chandler.”

He does. The bubbles float away, popping in air.

“Now,” Dorian says, “there is very little I don’t like about the view, but would you care to join me somewhere less damp?”

Ethan grunts out a yes and climbs from the tub. Dorian tosses him a towel, Ethan catches it with one hand. “Done taking care of me?”

“Not in the slightest.”

Ethan wraps the towel about his waist as Dorian plucks his robe from the floor. “Come this way.”

Dorian walks into shadow. Ethan pads behind him, leaving a trail of wet footprints. The hallway is narrow and short, opening up into a second space, similar to the first save instead of a bath, there’s a bed.

A window. Rain taps against the glass. Ethan puts his palm to the pane. “Is it strange I don’t remember the rain?”

Dorian steps in beside him and leans into the wall. “I can barely remember the sun.”

“Seems you could use some,” Ethan laughs, wiping the wet away. “You’re paler than I remember.”

“And you’re not quite as drunk.”

Ethan shifts, his shoulder to the window ledge. He taps Dorian on the chest. “And whose fault is that?”

“Mine, I suppose? If the expectation is wine, women and song.”

“No women,” Ethan says. “Just you.”

Dorian wraps a hand around Ethan’s wrist. “That is not precisely my reputation, Mr. Chandler.”

“I promise not to tell.” He draws Dorian closer.

“Do you promise not to be disappointed?”

“Only one person in this room can disappoint me.”

Dorian lifts Ethan’s hand, places a a kiss upon his fingers. “I look at you and should see a wolf, but all I see is the lamb, and some lamb you are.”

“You speak of slaughter.”

“I speak of sacrifice.”

Ethan drags his thumb over Dorian’s mouth. He licks at Ethan’s skin as if chasing a snowflake with the tip of his tongue.

“I have given up everything.”

“Not to me,” the other man says, and then his hand is to Ethan’s hip and he pulls Ethan in. Close. “London may be your graveyard, and perhaps you came here to mourn, but what is more connected to death than pleasure?”

Of course Dorian is right.

So right that when Ethan pushes into Dorian, there’s a violence in it. The man’s head snaps back, connecting with the wall, a dull thud.

All Dorian does is smile. “Show me your teeth.”

That's all it takes. Ethan plants one hand to either side of Dorian’s body. Leans in so close they share the same breath, the shame shuddering exhale. When they kiss, when Ethan finally forgets why he is here, forgets who he is, and remembers only the shape of Dorian beneath him, his body finally responds. Heat rises, a line of warmth up his spine, and there is the twitch of his cock and Dorian’s laugh before Ethan silences him with one hand, with one rough stroke. “Turn around.”

“So impatient,” Dorian murmurs, but then his mouth is to Ethan’s neck, a gentle smattering of kisses that turn to bites deep enough to bruise.

There is the familiar rumble in Ethan’s chest. He nudges at Dorian, marking him. Scenting him even as he grips the man’s shoulder and urges him to turn. Ethan presses in, his chest to Dorian’s back until they are breathing as one again, a gentle lilt, a meditation and Ethan kisses him softly, nuzzling him as he cups Dorian’s ass, kneading, dragging nails over skin, drawing red, red lines in the pale.

“The oil,” Dorian reminds him. “It will improve the evening for both of us.”

“Demanding little fuck, aren’t you?” Ethan fists Dorian’s hair. “Stay where you are.”

Dorian does. His eyes are closed, his head into the wall, a crooked arm above his head, the other down by his chest. His body is angled, Ethan notices Dorian shift slightly, dragging his cockhead over stone.

“I thought you preferred your lovers animate.”

Dorian opens his eyes. “Alive, yes. Breathing preferred, but not necessary.”

“Shall I wrap my hand around your neck?”

“If you like.”

They both know it won’t matter. Ethan could kill him a hundred times and a hundred times more.“Maybe tomorrow.”

Dorian quirks an eyebrow, smiles in the way he does when he is amused, interested. Surprised. Ethan works the stopper free of the bottle and drops a small bit of oil onto his fingers. He blinks away perfume, stronger than anything Dorian usually wears, he wrinkles his nose and lifts the bottle.

“It’s meant to stimulate,” Dorian says.

Ethan leans in, circling Dorian’s cock with one hand. The man is already so hard. “Let’s see if it works.”

“I suspect it’s already started to.”

At that, Ethan pushes Dorian back to the wall, his shoulder hard into Dorian’s spine. Trapping him. Keeping him still as he coats his fingers.“Yes?”

Dorian nods into the wall. “Absolutely.”

Ethan bites down into Dorian’s shoulder, a gentle gnaw not meant to break skin, but to mark. Slowly, he fits his fingers into Dorian’s cleft, working the oil into his skin. Dorian reaches back. Ethan digs his elbow into Dorian’s spine, bracing them both. “Stay.”

Dorian laughs softly. “As you like.”

There is nothing about this Ethan does not like. Slowly, he strokes the pad of his thumb over Dorian’s opening. Dorian’s stance widens and Ethan slides a finger in, two fingers in, curling. Stroking as Dorian lifts his hips, shifting to draw Ethan in further, to change the angle, the depth.

“There,” Dorian gasps. “Just there.”

Ethan traps Dorian to the wall, twists and opens his fingers and Dorian groans, rocking against his hand.

“I think here, instead.”

Dorian tries to laugh but it comes out laboured. “You’ve had some practice since were last together.”

“More than a little,” Ethan says pushing deeper before he adds another finger, spreading them, loosening Dorian for him.

“How many today?” Even as he goes to tiptoes, twisting himself against Ethan, his cock thickens, sends a glistening drop of come to the floor. “How many men have you pleasured?”

“Two.” Because there was the stranger this morning, and now he is here.

Dorian rocks into Ethan, his words lilting, breathless. “I would bring you so many beautiful creatures, I would let them adore you, worship you.”

Ethan slides his fingers free, wiping them on Dorian’s thigh. “Not one for jealousy?”

“Not if you fuck me first and last.”

It’s enough. Enough that Ethan grips Dorian’s neck until Dorian gasps for air. He captures his mouth, kissing him, teeth through skin. Salt and blood and he’s pushing at Dorian, working his own cock, coating it, opening the other man and then he pushes, sliding in. Dorian is perfect and tight and yielding. Ethan settles there, breathing down the feel of it.

He has fucked a hundred men.

None felt like this. None look at him the way Dorian does. Wonder and lust and forgiveness.

“Ethan,” Dorian whispers. “Come back to me.”

Dorian’s hand is on Ethan, urging him. Ethan kisses him again, his hand to the back of Dorian’s head, holding him still, his cheek against the rough stone as he moves, a slow, languid press deep into the other man. “Come with me,” Ethan murmurs into Dorian’s skin.

“That’s the plan,” Dorian smiles. “But I’ll need you to do more than lean into me for that to happen.”

“Not what I meant.” An important correction, punctuated by an emptying as he drags himself free. Dorian gasps, a barely-there whimper as he pushes back, away from the wall, chasing Ethan’s cock.

“Be still.”

The man grunts, shifts enough to pretend it’s a protest, but does as he’s asked. Ethan thrusts, a sudden snap of hips, marked by a scream as Ethan bottoms out, a brutal, violent impaling. The room fills with the sound until there is nothing but breathing, but sighs.

“God, more,” Dorian urges, twisting himself on Ethan’s cock.

“Shut up,” Ethan barks as he curls his hand over Dorian’s shoulder, pretends his nails are not claws even as he drives into Dorian, rutting like some kind of animal,his body all coiled warmth as he exhales sharply, working himself deeper and deeper still until there is no space between them, no room for air for breath or sound. He has never felt the way he feels with Dorian, as if the world is no beast, is the perfect beast. As if he is perfect and he pulls out suddenly, leaving Dorian empty in a sputter of accented nonsense,a tumbling of useless words, but its only a moment, a second, an inhale and then he sheathes his cock in the man’s perfect warmth, grinding into him.

Everything goes bright.

Dorian screams but it’s faraway. Another room. Another lifetime and Ethan. Ethan fists Dorian’s cock to bring them both back to the present. “Go,” Ethan says and Dorian fucks himself into Ethan’s fist. Fucks himself into a shudder, a sudden burst of wet and Ethan’s name over and over and over again.

Slowly, Ethan pulls free. 

Wet. To Dorian’s mouth. Ethan’s sticky fingers but Dorian revels in it, sucking the spend from Ethan as if it is Ethan’s cock. There is the memory of Dorian’s mouth. Dorian’s urgent hands. Dorian’s kindness. Tenderness. Ethan falls into him, forehead to the sharp of Dorian’s shoulder, an idle touch of hands. Of holding.

They are like that for a moment. For too long. For as long as it takes the sun to set over the Colorado mountains, for the sun to rise over the Thames, to hear the gentle gallop of horses, the turning of carriage wheels, the thunderous gallop of mustangs cresting over a wind-burned plain.

“Ethan,” Dorian whispers, carefully breaking the silence. “I suspect I’ve become part of the architecture.”

Ethan grumbles in protest, but he shifts. Not too far. Leaves the smallest of spaces for Dorian to turn, but not so much that Ethan can’t place his palm on Dorian’s chest, can’t lean in, a brush of lips, a kiss, the idle stroke of his thumb over Dorian’s eyebrow. The man’s cheek is abraded. Ethan thinks to apologize, but he is not sorry.

“Close up,” Dorian murmurs, “a Monet is nothing but colour, but stand back and it becomes flowers, lily pads, ponds and parasols. What do you see when you look at me?”

“The last beautiful thing in all of London.”

“And when you leave London?”

“You will still be beautiful.”

“But what will I have, Mr. Chandler? What will you have left me?”

“There’s a chance this will bruise,” he says, pressing a reddened patch on Dorian’s skin.

“Only for a moment,” Dorian reminds him. “Then it will fade.”

“I can’t stay here,” Ethan steps back. His clothes are still being cleaned and suddenly he is so, so naked. There is the robe. At least one of them will be covered. “I can’t hide away in your home like one of your pieces of art.”

“Nor would I ask you to. But do we not understand each other?” Dorian slips the robe around his shoulders, but doesn’t use the tie. “Are we not familiar?”

He is so, so pale next to all that crimson.

“Understanding is not acceptance.”

“It is not me you do not accept, Ethan.”

No, it’s not. “I came here to devour all the ghosts of my past.” He pauses. “You are one of them.” For he loved Brona, even as he found himself in Dorian’s bed, and then he yearned for Dorian and the way Dorian never made him a monster, even as he called his beast. As the moon made victims of them both.

“I would let you consume me.”

Ethan swallows down desire and darkness, a sudden want of teeth and flesh, a howling. Imagines his name trapped in Dorian’s throat, a desperate wanting beg. Dorian would crawl for him. Dorian would kiss the tops of his feet, the back of his hands, would swallow his spend. Has swallowed his spend, drunk him down like wine.

“Is that not the problem?” The mattress is horsehair and wool and feathers, bedstead brass and iron. It easily holds Ethan’s weight.

“I like to think it might be the solution,” Dorian offers. “Feed me your dark, Ethan, I can swallow it whole.”

“And then what?”

“And then,” Dorian says, coming to a crouch between Ethan’s legs, even though there is room for both of them on the bed. “When you are done with the night, I will bring you the dawn.”

It’s easy for him to run his hand over Dorian’s hair, a tangle of fingers, a fist to hold Dorian steady, forehead to forehead. He closes his eyes and sees not the bleak, stone-coloured rain but sunrise, a brilliant streak of gold brightening the horizon. “All right,” he says, even though he’s not sure just what he’s agreeing to.

When Dorian tongues a warm wet line along the inside of Ethan’s thigh, he’s not sure it matters.

-FIN- 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The golden, raw morning light, the weight of his own immortality, a promise made he couldn’t ever keep and the reaching, the yearning. Every promise broken in the twist of his heel, the dragging of his coat along the cobblestone path. Back to his home, to his museum._  
>  _His mausoleum. But he told this man he would help him hunt for ghosts. Drag every last memory out into the dawn and watch_ _them burn. Ethan leans in, pressing his forehead to Dorian’s._  
>  _Finally, Dorian Gray has made a promise he deeply wants to keep._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe how long this took me to write & post, I guess I didn't realize where this was going or how dark it was going to get. But here we are. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy :) xoxox
> 
> (this is non-beta'd, so any terrible grammar is my own damn fault)

 

“Grey”, Ethan murmurs into the bend of his elbow, forearm over his eyes to block the unexpected slip of wavering sunlight. It’s nothing like the sun he remembers, burning orange, the landscape parched, the neighing of horses frothing at the mouth. Dust in his eyes, in the folds of his coat, his boots cracked and just as thirsty.

Yesterday he complained about the rain. 

“You rang,” Dorian says, pushing away the blankets. All of him at attention.

“Her name,” Ethan says, wiping the back of his hand over his forehead. “Is Lillian Grey.” The woman who opened the door to Limehouse, Lillian who took him in. Who led him down the dark hallway. Who handed him over to Dorian.

_Gray_.

“One is dove, the other stone.” Dorian waves his hand as he kicks at the edge of the blanket.

“And which are you?” Ethan asks, shifting.

There’s a wiggle of hips. “Shall you make a guess, Mr. Chandler?”

Ethan lifts a pillow, dropping it just below the man’s belly button. Dorian rests his hands on the feathers, turning the hem of the bed cover in his fingers. He smiles at the unexpected amusement in Ethan’s face. “Perhaps Miss Lilly is my mother.”

“To lie is to know the devil,” Ethan says, his drawl deep, tinged with sleep.

“Am I not so young, could I not be of her loin? Perhaps the light by which you first saw her is the same that brightens me. Perhaps her face also only tells half a truth.” 

Ethan rolls over, props his chin with the heel of his hand and reaches, the tips of his fingers barely meeting Dorian’s shoulder. Hesitant, as if they are not already lovers, as if Dorian has not already left his mark. “You have not been young in a long time, Mr. Gray.” They both know age has nothing to do with the passing of time. 

“Mr. Chandler.” It’s not formality, but it is amusement. “You are allowed to touch me, I’m not some precious doll propped up in a toy store window.”

There is the corner of Ethan’s mouth. The bright of his incisor. “Everything breaks in time.”

Dorian would argue. Could argue, given the passing of his own life, the lack of noticeable scars. “Not all things.” For he remembers a hundred mornings like this.

Not like this. 

The golden, raw morning light, the weight of his own immortality, a promise made he couldn’t ever keep and the reaching, the yearning. Every promise broken in the twist of his heel, the dragging of his coat along the cobblestone path. Back to his home, to his museum.

His mausoleum. But he told this man he would help him hunt for ghosts. Drag every last memory out into the dawn and watch them burn. Ethan leans in, pressing his forehead to Dorian’s.

Finally, Dorian Gray has made a promise he deeply wants to keep.

#

Dorian sits on the edge of a bath drained, for now, of water. Ethan sits in a rickety old wooden chair as if taking first watch. They don’t so much as look at each other. Perhaps they are both wary of what they might see; truth, in a sudden furtive glance, in a half-formed smile, in the showing of teeth. 

“Is today the day, Mr. Chandler?”

Ethan turns his gun over in his lap. The day is too young, the sky too bright, even in its haze, in mist. What there is of the sun is a reaching, golden hand. How Ethan would love to hold on to it, to feel its fingers in his own.

There was Vanessa’s hand. Vanessa’s smile. Is today the day the ghosts show their faces? Or are they only to be haunted in their own hearts? 

“We could stay here,” Ethan says. “That boy would bring us breakfast.” 

“I would happily feed you, Ethan.” Dorian walks over to the man and his little wooden chair. Lowers himself to the floor in an easy curl, resting an arm over Ethan’s thigh, his chin to the man’s knee. It only takes a moment, but then Ethan’s fingers are in his hair. Dorian closes his eyes.

“Would you?” Ethan asks.

“Hrm.” Dorian replies. “Red fruits and wine, dark chocolate and sweet bread. Honey candy.” He lifts his chin and opens his eyes.

Ethan glances to the right, shy and maybe a little nervous. 

A softness comes over Dorian. “I find myself famished.” It’s easy to settle himself between Ethan’s legs. 

Ethan’s touch is sweet, urging, the tip of his finger beneath Dorian’s chin. Dorian smiles and nuzzles the soft inside of Ethan’s thigh. Licks a wet line from knee to the place where Ethan's cock hangs, half-hard. It is easy to lap at the silken underside, to breathe in salt and sweat and drag his bottom lip over the head, tongue to slit and a moment spent in a sigh.

The chair creaks. Ethan closes his eyes. Dorian takes the whole of the man’s cock in his mouth, warming it, calling the blood and was that not Vanessa, too, devil and demon both? Mother or daughter of darkness and Dorian, how he missed her, called to her with his own hand between his legs as his nails opened wet, blooded lines through the skin of his chest, splitting flesh.

Drinking down drops drawn from his own body. 

When Ethan groans the images changes. Now there’s the weight of Ethan on his tongue bringing him back to the now, steadied by the weight of Ethan’s hand in his hair. A quick, sudden tug then a murmur like apology. Dorian chuckles, lapping softly. Tenderly. Milks Ethan with the soft sucking of his tongue, the hollowing of his cheeks, a slow urging sigh. Dorian’s own cock stirs, lifts.

“Oh, Dorian, that ain’t…” Ethan mumbles, his low drawl all slow and syrup. 

Dorian wraps his hands around Ethan’s calves as if pulling him closer. It is merely leverage, a place for Dorian’s hands, a kneading want. Ethan drops his head. Dorian works him, draws salt into his mouth, drags the tip of his tongue along Ethan’s slit, seeking the man’s release.

When Ethan’s belly tightens, Dorian feels it. The unexpected seizing of muscles, the line of tendon in his hands, the curling of toes and the low, unexpected whine. 

“Won’t…ungh.”

No, Ethan won’t last long at all. Dorian curls his tongue under the head of Ethan’s cock, circles it, lifts his chin and swallows the other man down until his own eyes water. Until his own cock leaks to the floor.

Until, until. Until.

Until Ethan gasps and spills and Dorian, Dorian swallows and swallows and swallows. Wipes his wet, swollen mouth on Ethan’s skin. If he had ink and a pin he would sign his own name, offer up his own flesh and let Ethan carve a promise into skin. 

Dorian leans back. Shuffles back enough so there’s enough space between them that he can take in the whole of the other man, and so Ethan can see the whole of him in turn. He looks up. Ethan looks down. And Dorian finds he likes the view, so he wraps his hand around his own weeping cock. “Should I come for you, Mr. Chandler?”

Ethan scratches his own belly. Takes a deeper breath. Lifts a bare foot and presses his toes into Dorian’s thigh. Dorian presses a kiss to the inside of Ethan’s knee. 

“Look at me,” Ethan says.

Dorian does. Ethan’s face is flushed, his heart beating just a little too fast. His cock hangs between his legs, glistening with spit and semen. Ethan lifts his foot, touching Dorian’s chest. He lifts it higher. Dorian plants a second kiss to his instep. Presses his cheek into the curve of Ethan’s foot. 

“Does this please you, Ethan?”

“Yes.”

“And I as well,” Dorian replies, gently palming his cock as Ethan slides the ball of his foot over his mouth. Keeps it there. 

“Work yourself,” Ethan urges. 

This is not the Ethan he remembers, desperate and pawing, unsure but at the mercy of his beast, the teeth and claws beneath his skin.  They have changed in the years spent apart. They were changed by the years they spent together. Dorian licks at Ethan’s skin, bites him softly, teeth into the first knuckle of the man’s toe and then he closes his eyes, murmuring, brushing his cheek into Ethan’s ankle and Ethan shifts, rests his leg on Dorian’s shoulder. Dorian glances at the floor, the rough stone, and then to his own cock, red and weeping and so fucking hard.

His usual ease and elegance gives way to rut, to the bucking of hips and the ragged pull of his cock until he is gasping, spilling. Staining the ground with his own come and Ethan.

Sighs. 

Dorian lowers his eyes and kisses the man’s knee.They are silent a moment, long enough for what there is of the sun to warm their faces. Dorian lifts his chin. “Shall you keep me at your feet?”

“Yes. At my feet, at the foot of my bed.”

This is not the man he remembers. “Ah, you want a dog, then?”

“Or whatever creature you are.” Ethan leans in, elbows to knees.

Dorian tilts back, presses his hands to the ground and bows until he’s on his own hands and his own knees, closing the distance between them. Finds Ethan’s mouth. Kisses him, a soft and gentle promise, the same promise he made yesterday. 

“I am the creature that will eat your darkness, Mr. Chandler, and bring you back to the light.”

“If we destroy the whole of our pasts—”

“You can call me Matthew and I will call you John.” Apostles speaking their own truth. 

“A tax collector?” With an easy brush of Dorian’s hair. 

It’s just as easy for Dorian to press his cheek to Ethan’s palm. “You remember your gospels.”

“It’s difficult to be an abomination in the eyes of the Lord without knowing the Lord.”

Dorian wraps a hand around Ethan’s wrist. “God has no place here.”

The noise Ethan makes is not agreement, but it’s also not argument. “Should I call for water?”

“And have me wash you clean?”

Yesterday, Ethan held Dorian in his arms. Yesterday seems so far away and yet it feels to Dorian as if they have never parted, as if they are joined. Joined in magic, the casting of spells, the drinking of poisons and potions. The call of London and her skeleton hands. Her monsters.

“The stain may not come out,” Ethan warns.

There’s no need for explanation. Dorian knows precisely what the man means. “I made you a promise, Ethan. I will hold every drop of blood you spill in my open hands. I will drink until the chalice is empty. I will see you baptized. I will see you reborn.”

“It won’t bring her back.” 

The girl with the raven hair and pointed chin, thin-boned and brutal, a carrion bird. “Even if Vanessa were to walk through this door, in her silks and lace, I would not move from my place here.” For all Vanessa offered, this is where Dorian belongs. “But would you choose her a second time?” Dorian is used to being a distraction. Escape. 

Ethan doesn’t answer right away. Instead there is a caress. The gaze of his thumb over Dorian’s mouth. Dorian blinks, his belly turns over. He has wanted much, taken much, but never this. He has never bowed, never knelt. Never wanted like he wants right now, here, in this space with this man. 

“I choose you,” Ethan says. 

Dorian parts his lips. Tongue to Ethan’s thumb and Ethan presses. Dorian sucks, laps, closes his eyes and his body tightens. 

“We could start with Malcom Murray.”

Dorian swallows down desire, turns and slides one leg under the other, settling in this space. If Ethan was expecting surprise, Dorian doesn’t show it. “You fault him for his father’s love?” For Mina over Vanessa. For dragging them all into the dark.

“I fault him for not loving enough.” 

“By what measure?”

“You know what measure.” 

Yes, Dorian knows. The sacrifice of a daughter for a daughter. He knows the weight of guilt, a noose. Malcolm’sdestruction of his own son. First son. The demon that inhabited his second daughter, a girl he only pretended to protect.

“You love him,” Dorian says.

There’s no argument. But then again, Dorian knows Ethan once loved his own father, a brutal terror of a man. 

“If we bury him, we bury the last of all of them.”

Mina. Vanessa.“Ah, but what of your own heart?”

Ethan taps the gun to his knee. “What of yours?”

“What I felt for Vanessa was not love, but the infinite possibility of the dark.”

“A dark made up of nothing but monsters.”

“When you have seen the sun rise as many times as I have…”

“You’ve seen it set just as many.”

Dorian pushes up from the floor. “And still the night surprises me.” He pauses. “Is that not where you and I first found each other?”

“You opened a door, Dorian.”There was the howling of dogs and the way his body responded. 

“I suspect it had been ajar for some time, Mr. Chandler.”

Ethan grunts. Drags a hand through his hair. “I meant what I said.” About Malcom.

“If the day starts with a little death, should it not end the same way?” 

Ethan leans back, the gun back in his hand. “You would kill with me?”

Dorian nods and lightly touches his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’ve done worse with lesser men.”

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
